


The Log in Your Eye

by TangentialMango



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:03:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5318030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TangentialMango/pseuds/TangentialMango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I have to assume your current attraction is founded on pity, and I want no such thing.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Log in Your Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Some references are made to A Stitch in Time, but it's not necessary to have read it.

“I've noticed that most of the Cardassian novels you've loaned me feature characters that are rather static. They don't evolve much over the course of the story.” It was something Julian had picked up on a few novels ago, but waited to read a few more just to be sure. “Would you say that's accurate, or a coincidental similarity based on what you've given me so far?”

“As long as what you've given me is representative of character development in human literature, then yes, I’d agree. Many of your protagonists behave somewhat...erratically.”

“You make them sound so fickle.”

“Only by comparison. If I had to guess, I'd say that your culture's focus on individualism leads to more stories that incorporate personal growth...”

“...while the Cardassian tendency towards collectivism means a greater number of stories where an individual's growth is irrelevant.”

“Quite,” Garak said.

*** 

Julian sat up, opened his eyes, and let his gaze wander around the infirmary again. Exhausted as he was, sleep wasn’t going to come to him any time soon, and he might as well accept that. His thoughts were churning, sluggish yet persistent, and entirely unwilling to let him get some rest.

Meanwhile, the man who occupied his thoughts was getting the first restorative sleep since this ordeal began. It had been such a close call. Julian had no idea if he'd be able to find Tain, let alone if the man would be willing and able to give him the information he needed to save Garak’s life. Thankfully, it seemed he was finally in the clear. The implant in Garak’s brain was disabled, the synthesized leukocytes had been administered, and he was steadily improving.

It was only occurring to him now in the silent aftermath just how emotionally invested he was in this “friend” of his. As his eyes settled on the form on the biobed next to him, he decided he would act on those feelings once Garak was himself again. It wasn’t as if he felt this way about someone every day. And, he thought with some relief, Garak seemed likely to return his affections.

With his mind made up, sleep came much more easily.

***

“Doctor, what exactly are you trying to accomplish?” Garak gently removed the hand from his shoulder, but held on to it, his expression neutral.

“I thought I was being clear. You've been flirting with me for years now. How else does one indicate that the feeling is mutual?” He gave the back of Garak’s hand a brief kiss.

Garak’s expression became, if anything, more stony. “And why now?”

“Why now? My god, Garak, you almost died. Sometimes you don't realize what someone means to you until it's almost too late.”

Garak’s gaze flicked down at their joined hands for a moment, and then met Bashir’s eyes again. “You say I mean something to you, but you only realized it now.”

“Yes.”

“Now, after you saved my life.”

“Well, yes, but-”

“After you saw me at my absolute lowest and most desperate.”

“No! I mean, yes, but I don't care about any of that. I care about you, and I’d like to think that you care for me too. I want to see where that takes us,” he responded, a bit more nervously now. The uncomfortable heat he felt had nothing to do with Garak's shop and everything to do with this unexpected interrogation.

Garak patted his hand and then released it. “I'm afraid I must decline your offer.”

It was a few moments before Julian could process this. “I don't understand,” he said. “I can't have imagined all those looks and touches. Were you just playing with me?” There was no anger in his words. Only the frustration of one trying to pinpoint his own misjudgment. “String the Starfleet doctor along, see how long it takes him to figure it out?”

“No, Doctor, there's no need for such accusations. If you had come to me before, I would have reciprocated without a second thought. As it is,” irritation crept into his voice, “I have to assume your current attraction is founded on pity, and I want no such thing.”

“That's not-”

“Please Doctor,” he said, raising a hand as if to halt him. “Let's not make this more difficult than it already is. You feel compassion for the recovering addict exiled from his home. That's bad enough on its own, don't confuse it with something deeper.”

Julian stood there silently, brow furrowed in disappointment. He knew himself well enough to recognize that he wasn't a fool that fell for someone just because he felt sorry for them. At the moment, however, he had no means of explaining that to Garak. Having assumed that Garak was a sure thing, his refusal hurt all the more, accordingly.

“I hope you understand,” Garak went on, “I do wish to continue our lunches. I enjoy your company and want nothing more than to put all the dreadful business of the last two weeks behind us.”

“Just…go back to how everything was before,” he said softly.

“Exactly.”

He sighed and ran his hand through hair. “Alright, fine. Just answer one question for me. If I could prove to you that my feelings aren't based on pity…”

“My dear Doctor,” he said, flashing a genuine smile for the first time since Julian had entered the shop, “I would be delighted.”

 

***

It seemed like he'd waited a sufficient amount of time.

He didn’t want to rush things and risk Garak mistaking his initiative for pity again. Because it wasn't pity; it never had been. Perhaps a touch of sympathy, though. A strained relationship with one's father was plenty familiar.

In that miserable Jem’Hadar prison, Garak had willingly revealed more of himself in a few days than Julian had managed to pick apart in four years. It was such an uncharacteristic display of trust from someone whose guard was always up, who never gave anything away. It had a powerful effect on him, and he wanted more, just as he had two years ago.

So he’d allowed both of them to take their time with their recovery after their escape, and dragged out the paperwork as long as he could. It was a decent time lapse on its own. Then the mess with Zimmerman started and he’d spent the next week putting out the fires his parents had sparked decades ago. Now his augmented status was public knowledge, and he still hadn’t had the conversation with Garak he’d intended to have after they returned from the Gamma quadrant.

He pressed the chime and was admitted to Garak’s quarters a moment later.

“Doctor, what brings you here this evening?” he asked with a polite smile.

_No time like the present,_ Bashir thought as he closed the distance between them. “You,” he said, bringing one hand to rest on Garak’s upper arm. “I wanted to see if you were willing to give us a chance yet.” He let his hand move down the arm until their hands were joined. He stared down at the point of contact as if wishing it to become permanent.

Garak blinked slowly. “And this has nothing to do with what happened in the Gamma quadrant?”

_Yes,_ he thought. “No,” he said.

Garak's smile widened. “Funny. You can deceive everyone as to who and what you really are for decades on end, but you can't hide something so small.” He stepped out of Julian’s reach. “This has everything to do with what happened in that prison cell.”

“Even if it does, it doesn't involve pity.”

“You might be right, Doctor. While I certainly thought that you were being driven by pity after the incident with the wire, now I'm not so sure.” He spoke calmly, not like last time when Julian had caught him off guard. This was expected. Maybe he'd even rehearsed it. “Tell me, have you noticed a pattern to your romantic interests?”

“No,” he replied. At most, he thought he might have a type - female, intelligent, non-human - but he never limited himself those attributes. After all, Garak himself didn't entirely fit that mold.

He could tell that Garak wasn’t referring to such superficial characteristics, however.

“Think, Doctor. Use that enhanced mind of yours. Everyone you've pursued for more than a one-night stand has something in common.”

So it was this game again. Garak was dropping hints and allowing Julian to draw his own conclusions. He resented this treatment. It was one thing when they were unraveling some political scheme of Dukat’s, but quite another when it concerned his love life.

“They were all my patients at one time or another, but that's to be expected when I'm the primary physician on the station.”

“Close, but not quite.”

_No hope for straight answers, then_ , he thought. He saw no way out now other than to play along, so he began pacing. “Most recently, there was Leeta. She’s a dabo girl, but wants to become a sociologist. She could become one too, if she ever got the chance. She's smarter than most people assume.”

“And yet, she will most probably never get that chance, will she?”

“No, she’s an orphan. She has no family to rely on for support. It’s not fair, really. She didn't have access to a quality education as a child during the Occupation, and now she can't afford one as an adult.”

“And so you took it upon yourself to offer her a sort of replacement education. You offered to assist her in studying to apply to a University and see if she could get a scholarship, though she didn't take you up on that offer. So you gave her an all-inclusive tour of culture and arts of the Alpha quadrant. Holoprograms of museums, symphonies, theater performances. Things she never had the opportunity to experience before, and wouldn't be able to experience on her own for the foreseeable future. But she never really took to any of them, did she?”

“Towards the end, it seemed like she was avoiding them.” In hindsight, he should have noticed that she wasn't enjoying these outings all that much, but he didn't pick up on her subtle attempts to redirect their dates until they broke up.

Garak let the words hang there a moment before prompting him again. “And before Leeta?”

“Well, there was Melora. An ensign specializing in Stellar Cartography. The first Elaysian to join Starfleet. She had a few challenges because of that, coming from a planet with low surface gravity.”

“But you came up with a solution to her problem too, didn't you? A way of helping her adapt to our gravity.”

“Yes, and she refused it. She said that if she couldn't move easily in low gravity, she wouldn't really be Elaysian anymore.” And the pieces began to fall into place and he was seeing what Garak saw…

“And now you're after me. A man of illegitimate origins with a tendency towards claustrophobia, who's trapped on this station indefinitely. If you thought Leeta and Melora were attractive with their respective problems, I must seem like quite a catch with so many issues to choose from,” he said with only the thinnest veneer of amusement.

“Garak, if you're joking, this isn't funny.”

“It could hardly be considered a joke when all of the evidence agrees,” he insisted, the last shred of amusement gone. “You’ve only pursued me after you’ve witnessed my defects.”

“This is insane! I don’t want to…” he struggled to put it into words, “fix you or change you, and I didn’t want to change them either!”

“Perhaps not. I don’t think that you’re entirely aware of what you’ve been doing. This is something that goes deeper than simply feeling sorry for someone. But I will not tolerate any attempts to morph and mold me into some ideal Federation companion. So, I suggest we leave things as they are.” With that, he gestured to the door.

But Julian refused to let it go. “So that’s it, you won’t even give me a chance? I know that this must look incredibly damning to you, but if you’d allow me, I’d prove to you that I won’t pressure you be anyone but yourself.”

Garak was adamant. “Pursuing a relationship will only end with my discomfort and your disappointment. It’s best if we put this behind us and pick up where we left off before that changeling replaced you.”

“No, I’m tired of flirting over lunch and then never going anywhere with it,” he said. There was more to this, some reason Garak was redirecting him. It only to took him a minute of consideration. “Both times I've tried to get closer to you, you’ve pushed me away. You’re afraid of getting too close.”

He struck a nerve there, and resentment bled into Garak’s words. “Doctor, I think it’s best if you leave now.”

“It all goes back to what you said to me at the internment camp. You file any attachment under the heading of ‘sentiment,’ and distance yourself as much as possible.”

With that, Garak finally lost his temper. “And what if I do, Doctor?” With eyes blazing, his voice took on an icy edge he'd only ever heard before when Garak was suffering from withdrawal. “Are you going to try and fix me?”

They stood there staring at one another as the seconds dragged on. Finally, Bashir turned and left without another word.

Garak's implications were appalling. Even if his assertions were a shield for his own fears, Julian was disgusted that he would invent something so loathsome. And running through it all was the undercurrent of disappointment that he wasn't as trusted as he'd hoped.

Eventually, they began having lunch again, but it wasn't the same. He couldn't properly debate literature when a small voice on the back of his mind wondering whether Garak would interpret his words as an attempt to force him into a Federation worldview. So they drifted apart, keeping their few exchanges as polite as they'd ever been.

Beyond that, he didn't think about Garak's accusation. He certainly didn't think about it during his brief involvement with Sarina Douglas, nor did he think about it as he presented Ezri with every scrap of information he could find about unexpected joinings, and how to find balance after the fact.

When Ezri left six months later, that was when he thought about it. The breakup was amicable enough. There was no yelling or crying. Ezri hadn't cried in ages. It was easy to understand and accept that she was a different person now than when they're started dating, and that there had been communication problems on both sides. When she said that sometimes he “tried so hard to help that it hurt,” Garak's words echoed back and he was reeling. He tried to get more details about what she meant, but she refused to say more, claiming that she was too close to the situation and that she couldn't be his counselor.

To hear Ezri, with her head squarely on her shoulders, confirm what Garak had said years ago was horrifying.

He was determined not to let this happen again, so he resolved to not date anyone until he got this destructive pattern of behavior under control. Beyond that, he had no idea where to begin.

***

Julian set down the PADD, smiling to himself. When he received Garak's “letter” a day and a half ago, he had no plans to leave Deep Space Nine in either the near or distant future. Since Ezri had gone, he'd doubled down on his work, and began setting up half a dozen long-term research projects. It was easier to focus on the medical mysteries of the universe than it was to dissect his own flaws.

Garak's journal cut through the fog he'd found himself in. Garak had made himself appear vulnerable in a way that Julian had never expected. And there, embedded in and between the words was what he was really trying to say. _I'm better than I was. Cardassia is healing itself. If you accept these circumstances and still find yourself drawn to me, then you're welcome here._

Julian was still drawn to him, in spite of Garak's flaws and betterment alike. It was with some relief that he could honestly recognize it.

He knew he'd take Garak up on his invitation, though it wouldn't be for some time. First, he needed assurance that he wouldn't be making the same mistakes over again. Starting his own autobiography to send back to Garak should help with that. It would give him the opportunity to look inside himself and examine how he'd arrived at this point.

Rather than keep Garak waiting for him to finish what was sure to be a rather lengthy work in its own right, he sat down, and typed up a quick response to tide him over.

Getting the pleasantries out of the way, he began.

_I’m sending you this short message to let you know that I received your not-so-short recollection, and you can expect my own not-so-short reply in the fullness of time. It arrived at a critical time for me, and provided some much needed perspective._

_There are a number of ways I could examine the text you gave me. As your friend, you provided a great many answers to questions about yourself that I'd long given up on ever having answers to. Don't think that I'm accepting everything in this novel at face value; I haven't forgotten your highly instructive lessons in cynicism. But I find that, for my purposes, they're probably close enough to the truth._

_As your long-time partner in exchanging literature, it provided context in a way that no other book you've lent me has: this was a narrative written by a Cardassian for a non-Cardassian audience, and, accordingly, it contained much more exposition for my benefit. However, I suspect that when I have the opportunity to discuss it with you, we will have far less to disagree about, and I shall miss our normally spirited debates._

_And finally, as your unsolicited editor, I'm content to say that I wouldn't change a thing._


End file.
